dimanche 29 juin 2014

Animals that don't Exist

The Sleepless Snake

The
sleepless snake, Anguis Insomnis, is
one of nature’s most mysterious creatures. When they are born, the baby snakes
are a pristine white. But as they grow older, their scales become jet black.
Starting from around the eyes, the sleepless snake has more and more of it’s
scales turn black each time it sheds its skin, until finally, there is no white
left.

Their
venom gets stronger as they grow older, too, and when more than half of their
body has turned black, the snakes change sex, from male to female.

The
sleepless snake was given its name because of the fact that it never closes its
eyes. But recent studies suggest that the snake truly never sleeps. A large
number of animals had their brainwaves monitored for 24, 48 and 72 hours respectively
,by a group of researchers at the Shanghai institute for snakology, and none of
them showed brain activity that might indicate sleep.

Today,
the sleepless snake is found almost exclusively in central Asia. Hoewever, fossil
records, combined with recent biomolecular findings, indicate that the snake
once ranged through the whole Eurasian continent. It is believed that the last
ice-age greatly reduced the snake’s area of distribution, decimating the
population in Europe, and forcing it to seek shelter in the warmer south in
Asia. As the climate got warmer again, populations spread north once more.

Under
the Ming Zhao dynasty (714 B.C to 497 B.C), the snake was considered a sacred
animal. Historians believe that the black makeup woman wore at that time, in varying
degrees of skin-coverage, was an act to honor and revere the snake.

Ancient
texts from the Ming Zhao attribute various powers to the snake. It is believed
that its scales have the power to make one fertile. The white ones for the men,
the black ones for the women, they were administered as-is, to be swallowed
whole one hour before conception.

It’s
venom was believed to hold the secret to immortality. The more potent the
poison was, the stronger its powers were believed to be, and completely black
snakes were worth a fortune. The texts indicate that the royal family kept
thousands of snakes in captivity, to harvest for their medicine.

Recent
studies have discovered that there might be some truth to the legends around
the snake. A detailed analysis of its venom has shown that it contains a large
amount of telomerase. Telomerases cut off the strands of DNA capping our
chromosomes, called telomere. This telomere is a kind of buffer, before the
important code on the chromosome. Every time cells divide and chromosomes get
duplicated, they loose a bit of their telomere, and this phenomenon is one of
the candidates who might be responsible for the aging of the body.

But
when the venom cuts the telomere, the cell sees this as an attack, and restores
the telomere to ~1.5 time their former length, more than compensating for the
bits that were lost during normal cell activity. Although the venom in itself
is highly toxic, if the telomerase where purified correctly, and dosed right,
it might prolong life.